Benefits to SHIMS users from the use of PURVEYOR Software

This summary of benefits is the result of our experience both with
SHIMS (Supply House Inventory Management System) and with Purveyor Software.

1. As such it is extensive, but it leaves you to ponder any other benefits that have not occurred to me, which I am sure there are many of. It does not include the benefits of hardware supplier and operating system supplier independence, nor does it refer to the benefits of having the source code to the 4GL on the system. It does include the following:
   
   
2. Bill to one branch, but ship from another.
   
3. Parent company tracking, billing, statements, sales histories, cash receipts, credit limits, and A/R analysis.
   
4. Dunning letters.
   
5. Automated ordering of all the following:
   • sales orders
   • purchase orders
   • branch transfers
   • branch overstock retrievals (These will retrieve extra stock and all available stock from status 'MW', 'T', & 'SO' products.)
6. Activity-Based Cost (Net Profit) anaylsis of the following:
   • customer and parents
   • products and product lines
   • truck routes
   • branches
   • salesmen
7. Counter cash (& check, charge, and coupon) application to counter sales orders.
8. Separate credit/debit adjustments allows management oversight of damages, returns to stock, price adjustments, additional illings, etc. It also allows tracking by customer reason codes, ensures the use of the original cost for average cost purposes (not present cost), as well as producing both original and adjusted amounts on the original orders. Most of all, it makes possible accurate sales statistics from invoices.
9. Absolute terms allow precise aging, service charges, and prompt payment of invoices and can bring your receivables into line with your payables. Most customers will never notice that you've changed from NET 30th to NET 30, since the word PROX is not on the invoice or statement. They will simply find they have to pay sooner to avoid service charges. Either that or you can impress them with your generosity by "upping" their terms to NET 45 from NET 30th, without actually changing your terms.
10. Direct posting to accounts payable from P.O. stock receipts. (Single entry posting)
11. Freight and storage P.O.s create payables as well as adjust product last, average, and lot costs. Many purchases can be combined and shipped and/or stored using one FPO, as I call them, then some, all, or even some with other added P.O.s can be moved using another FPO. All costs regarding a product on a P.O. thus stored and/or moved using one or more FPOs are accumulated on the P.O. and on inventory files. Thus, any percentage-based (cost plus) pricing you use will be based on a cost that reflects transportation costs particular to that item. (This is not added to replacement cost.)
12. Lot control tracks warranties of non-serialized products, allows precision costing, multiple location (within each branch) inventory quantity tracking, reservation of stock for customer groups (such as R.E. Michels does with Marex Oil and the City of Baltimore), and calculation of availability per lot.
13. Multiple location inventory (see above) allows on hands, commitments, and incoming tallies to be maintained for each internal location.
14. Support of features found in other systems, such as:
    • product, customer, vendor, shipto, pickup scrolling, which supports not only numeric selections, but arrow key movement with space bar selection, page & all selections, and step-by-step qualifications. These return either single selections or multiple selections.
    • pull-down, bar, and flat (Proc) menus. Pull down support numeric selections, hot keys, and arrow key movement. Bar menus support arrow key movement and numeric selections. Flat menus support only numeric selections. These may be selected per terminal, or even per terminal per logon.
    • Lookup of fields such as terms code, tax jurisdiction, route status, line, etc. can be performed virtually anywhere in the system by pressing '?'.
    • On-line help is available on Ultimate Plus systems.
    • Print screens are available on all systems.
    • Sales Bids and future orders support subtotals.
    • Exception pricing supports qualification by shipto.
    • Pricing specials are supported.
    • coding of all transaction to general ledger account numbers
    • full support for product lines, price groups, including 12 month demand histories.
15. File maintenance is standardized through the use of a single Purveyor facility, which I call UPDATE. Those already familiar with RECALL report generation will find this facility a natural complement to it. It handles multivalues through a windowing facility, really a simple spreadsheet, that allows related multivalues (tables) to be entered and edited.
16. Many features have been designed to lower overall system overhead and to provide users with simple methods of getting work done:
    • a user friendly, highly secure, RECALL, UPDATE, LOAD, SET, and LOADIN management facility that allows novice users the ability to make, save, edit, execute, and reexecute reports and simple updates without the necessity of making formal requests for system programming. Users can be granted or denied access to certain files, are warned when they begin work using huge, system performance degrading files, and much more. It provides this in a library that is particular to their menu system.
    • arrow controlled editing is present throughout the system on any field on the system larger than a few characters. In UPDATE it is availability everywhere.
    • on all systems except Ultimate Plus, phantom processing is available that allows users to set up jobs in the background, then return to what they are doing.
    • Purveyor utilizes the multiple screens found on ADDS 4000, Wyse 150, and Esprit terminals. (The Wyse 50 terminal can be used, but works poorly.) This allows instantaneous refresh of screens after inquiries are performed and would particularly benefit the users at remote locations. It also radically reduces overall system overhead associated with such inquiries.
    • Bar graphs are available for the analysis of some important databases, but are only supported on Wyse150 and ADDS 4000 terminals.
17. Generic products are supported through multivalued vendor product numbers, replacement costs, list prices, and multipliers. This saves disk space and processing time while preserving product differentiation between vendors for price, cost, and identification purposes. When used with lot control, a high level of accuracy is possible for cost, price, and identification.
18. Availability that is actually representative of stock realities. This means that all incoming and outgoing materials are date qualified for availability.
19. Truck routing will now support branch transfers, from pick tickets to route sheets, ETAs to SGA cost analysis.
20. Location code cross referencing now allows one to quickly (that is the key!) query all products logged under that location code. This can radically improve a location coded warehouse's ability to monitor stock levels in a specific location that either needs to be periodically restocked from a secondary location or to restock a warehouse area that holds reserved stock for a customer group. This was never intended to substitute for multiple branch locations, which are also completely supported.
21. 1099-MISC filing will track payments, print forms, and files magnetically.
22. SGA cost distribution now supports using Branches as Cost Centers where Divisions were only supported before.
23. Valid signers selection at counter sales entry shows counter personnel who can sign order and allows them to actually tell the computer which one did. This allows standardized names on the order records, which can then be systematically searched for.
24. Branch transfers can be one, two, or three step. Also, in three step transfers, a simple Y answer to a question will cause the entire transfer to be received as shipped, unchanged.
25. True 4th generation language (original unnamed product) forms the basis of the entire system. It offers superior menus, report libraries, fast, efficient, easy to use file scrolling routines, standardized file maintenance with update window spreadsheet, cursor controlled editing, menu-driven function key loading, simple message center, word processing library, menu item security, finely graded bar graphs, spooler control menus, print screen utility, phantom process setup and management, system clock, and 100% reliable spooler assignment messages.
26. Weighted average and lot costing can put a fine cutting edge on profit analysis and ease sales management problems associated with inaccurate cost figures on sales of special procurements.
27. Physical inventory stock level freezes can be done by branch, by line, or even by inventory item.
28. Inventory related processing can be frozen by branch.
29. Physical inventory entry notifies the user when he or she makes an entry that differs from the frozen on hand by a large amount. The difference is a percentage that the adminstrator can enter into the system to fit your needs.
30. Tax jurisdiction defaults to the branch jurisdiction for counter sales.